Amazing News, and Surface Design

I hope you all really like surface design (a lot, a lot, a lot) because starting in October and lasting for the next two and a half years, it'll possibly be about the only thing you'll see on this blog! That's because I've been accepted to Jane Dunnewold's Art Cloth Masteries Program for 2011!! The program will cover all aspects of surface design and fabric dyeing. It's a huge honor to have been accepted and I am thrilled beyond words. I can't wait to get started!!

I have no idea how taking this class will effect either my work or my blogging, nor how much of what I'm learning I will be able to blog about. I know that the work load will probably kick my tush, but I am highly motivated and up for the challenge.

So while I nervously waited this week to hear news of whom had been accepted, I puttered with fabric, deconstructed screen printing, Thermofax screen printing and some overdyeing.

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you how this 100% cotton Primatex started as an only partly-successful deconstructed screen print to which I added several layers of traditional screening with textile inks and paints.

Interesting start, but the original DSP wasn't making me happy. I charged a few more screens with dyes, let them dry, and tried again.

(45" x 45")

MUCH happier! It still needs work, it's a little muddled in the middle and the bottom half is still fading away, but it's got some really fabulous bits happening in it.

(detail)

(detail)

A few other pieces are in various stages of preparations.

This is the second layer of a somewhat familiar theme for me (I did a similar piece that sold at QSDS earlier this year), so to keep it from becoming a repeat, I'll have to run it off the rails in some other direction and watch what happens.

This is the third layer for this piece of cotton muslin. It was hand-dyed, and then screened with black dye and then screened again with white textile ink. No idea where it will end up.

This one is feeling almost complete to me. It needs a little more attention and then some serious trimming with the rotary cutter!

I never would have thought I'd like this motley thing. It started as a deconstructed screen printing on white cotton that just never really "took", in my mind. One day I had some leftover kelly green dye that was already activated with soda ash (and therefore needed to be used right away), so I tossed the remains into a container with this. Bleck, it was seriously awful. I sent it to the discharge bucket and then sat on it for a few more weeks, hating it and not knowing how to fix it. Finally, I just started screening the heck out of it until it began to look better.

(detail)

This opportunity to study for two and a half years with an artist the caliber of Jane Dunnewold is mind-boggling to me. Two years ago, I shifted my focus from painting to fabrics and surface design, and a whole new world of art opened up for me. This weekend, even more of it unfolded when I read the email welcoming me to the next class. I intend to suck up every moment of education and wisdom I can.

Wish me luck! Happy creating!